David Ross

The Belgrade Conference

appropriately, it was Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, who gave the best account of the complaint made against the Belgrade nations. In a speech to the General Assembly, Lord Home said:

Is there growing up a code of international behaviour in which one rule is to be applied to the Communists and another to the Western democracies? One attitude to the bully because he deals in fear, another for the democrat because his stock-in-trade is reason and compromise? For instance, if it had been Britain or America who had lately conducted a series of 16 nuclear tests in the atmosphere and covered the world with fall-out, would the voices of criticism have been so hushed ? The uncommitted nations must not yield to the temptation to put public pressures on the reasonable nations because they feel that they can, in the last resort, be relied upon to be decent and give way.